I've Often Wondered What With The General Consensus That The Band Was Tired This Night, If It Could Have Had Something To Do With The Finale Of The Previous Night. Pig's Last Lovelight Into Two Souls In Communion, And Incredibly Emotional Performance With Ron's Rap In The Former Relating The Feelings Of A Man Who's Love Has Left Him Instead Of His Usual Bravado. He Sings Of Love Lost And Begs Her To Come Back And Not To Be Left Alone. Then The Band Segues Into The Latter A Reflection Of Someone At The End Of Their Road Wishing And Wanting What He Sees Others Sharing Love And Indeed Life. This One Had To Lay It All Right On The Doorstep.Making Everybody Really Consider The Inevitable That They Were Trying So Hard To Play Through. With The Last Notes Of Two Souls You Can Here The Solemness In Jerry's Voice As He Says Goodnight And Ends A Show That Had Been Full Of Energy 20 Minutes Prior. It Definitely Takes A while To Get Going On This The Next Show. It Had To Be Incredibly Tough. Love To Ron, Love To Jerry And All The Band And Crew. Forever Grateful (Sorry Always A Five.)

If you're going through the tour you'll listen regardless, and though it probably ranks at the bottom on the tour (just below Newcastle and maybe Rotterdam), it's E72 so it's still an average GOGD show. But if you are looking for London '72 shows go with 4/7 & 4/8 first followed by 5/23 & 5/24. (It's just called Lyceum Theater, not Strand Lyceum).

First Set. Bobby loses his place for Promised Land and Jer's not warmed yet. The set is average '72 until a focused Jack Straw. If not as astounding as some on E72, China Cat>Rider is solid. Good Lovin' starts two jam songs in a row. They're not the most inspired of the tour but Playin' does keep the Donnaskreech™ to a minimum. Casey Jones is flat.

Second Set. Pigpen is the glue and the best sequence of the show is Chinatown through Wharf. Uncle John's has a great solo and jam (but it's also flubby). Dark Star has long stretches of not much, with the verse coming in @16:50, though there IS a long Feelin' Groovy. Sugar Mag is sans Donna. Comes a Time is creaky but the end jam is fine. Sittin' on Top of the World is the last ever, and best of the three E72s. Goin' Down the Road & One More Saturday are solid enough to leave 'em happy.

1st Set:   C
2nd Set: C
Overall = 2½ stars

Highlights:
China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider - solid
Sittin' on Top of the World - last one and best of three

this and the next night are beautiful shows, the last of Pigpen and the end of an era..

Promised Land comes out rocking, ending rather abruptly.
BEW is short and sweet.
Big Boss Man is nice and funky
BTW is a great one, no overzealous singing, and good teamwork all around.
TN Jed is great, nice and twangy with the team’s cohesive playing culminating in a great jam session before the outro verse.
Mr. Charlie
Jack Straw, another great team effort here.
China>Rider, short and sweet segue here in the days prior to the extendo jam in the middle.
Me & Bobby
Good Lovin’, not a song I am generally fond of in the Pigpen era because they often tend to be a lot of boring backing to some rap which may be slightly entertaining. However, this one includes an awesome, psychedelic jam! The jam does slow down and meander for a while after the 7 minute mark before speeding back up at 11 minutes and then going into the outro verse.
PITB the jam is driven up till somewhere in the 8th minute where things slow down. These London shows mark the point where they’d started to explore the PITB territory a bit more, and are important for this reason. Great version.
Brokedown
Casey Jones

MAMU is a good way to open the set.
Big RR, Keith is clearly excited dropping double trills at the intro. Great energy in another rocking Big RR.
Chinatown Shuffle
Ramble on has a great feel to it.
UJB>Jam>Wharf Rat>Dark Star>UJB Jam>Tiger>Sugar Magnolia
UJB has a great vibe, pushing nice energy out, and then after the jam breaks down into a nice little jam that can’t decide if it wants to be Wharf Rat or Dark Star until Bob finally strums Wharf Rat chords deciding the issue. This is a great, powerful rendition, check out what Bobby does as Jerry starts into the “Get up and fly away” verse. Jer is in especially fine voice for this one, which he then diverts into his playing for the outro that blends perfectly into Dark Star’s opening notes. 6 minutes into DS we have a really nice jam, which by 8 minutes in has left the theme but remained with a decent amount of energy pushing through the boundaries of space, which gives up the energy around 11 minutes to go deep space exploring. HAL500 opens the pod bay door at around 14 minutes, and we’re in a dark place, Phil pushing it darker, with Bob and Jerry working between feedback and notes respectively (or is that Phil on the feedback?), until we return directly to theme just after 15 minutes in for the verse. After the verse Phil does a little jazz jam, backed by Keith and Billy. Guitars join in after a bit, slowly. We then get what would later be the Feeling Good Jam in the middle of China Rider, which seems to be based also on an UJB type idea. Prototype stuff here! Nice. It then heads back into a UJB jam basically. Around 25 minutes we head into a themeless, groovy jam, which then goes into a spacier place by 28 minutes… in this recess of space, starting just before the 30th minute, we are in the Jungle. The Tiger lives in the Jungle, this is a dark place. The Tiger goes strike immediately, but lurks in the bushes, you hear them rattling as it passes closer and closer. By 33 minutes X factor is achieved. While this Tiger never quite rips your face off, holy crap is it awesome. Bob can’t take it anymore and after the meltdown starts hinting at Sugar Magnolia to brighten things back up. Crikey! What a meat sequence! A+!
Comes a Time is a good call, I don’t know if I could handle any more intensity after what just happened. Bring me back to earth please. A fine rendition of one of my favorite ballads, Jerry taking control.
El Paso, another great rendition.
Sittin’ On Top of the World, the last rendition of this GD Surf Rock classic. Pig is in fine organ form for it. Fun song, primitive sure… love it! Jerry tears up some solo action. A+.
GDTRFB>OMSN
GDTRFB is so rockin’ Donna loses herself to the moment and screams! Seriously though, fuck yeah, great version here! Driven as can be, Billy, Jerry, Phil, Keith dominate. Hell, in the lighter moments you can even hear Pigpen. A+ version.

Performance Summary
Great show from the get go. The Meat Sequence is one of the best out there, and the closing GDTRFB is priceless. A+ show, much better than the next night, in my opinion.

Sound Quality
A+ for the official release.

Impossibly danceable show; sometimes I think the Dead could outfunk Parliament.

Check the Good Lovin' - this thing is a PRIME example of why ''72 is my favorite year; it's one to play for anyone who doesn't "get" the Dead. This isn't your average Pigpen rap-exercise, either; it's simply a showcase for the sheer INTENSITY of that wavy-backbone rhythm.

And then....*right* afterwards....Playin'! I mean, what other band would follow such an exhausting, amazing jam with yet ANOTHER 15-16 minute groove? They simply *could not* leave that hi-hat, maraca-shaky, ball-bearing sidewinder mash alone that spring!

Set 2's suite has, at the center, even yet MORE of that same craziness; Dark Star really should be something like, if you will: Jam > Space > DS > Groovy Jam > Space Jam - there's just way too much movement in this piece to relegate it to one title - it's like a classical piece in a half-dozen movements, and Sugar Magnolia, despite a rather hilarious short-circuit towards the end, caps everything off.

And the very last time they performed Sittin' on Top of the World? AMAZING!!!

The Strand Lyceum shows are quite similar in setlists, so pick the best of the bunch! But rating this stuff with 'stars' is rather odd; it's just such a given that this final leg of the Europe tour is the Dead at their most masterfully groovy. Got to endorse yet again that boxed set - it's really the only way to go.

I found this at LL under "No Title" >>
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-05-25.psbd.hamilton.147.sbeok.shnf

This show has been commercially released as " Europe '72: The Complete Recordings - All The Music Edition"

We know it's gone

Everything I hear here deserves 5 stars, I don't care what's missing. Wicked jam in Good Lovin'. Awesome piano and organ in Brokedown and Casey Jones. Great Mix. Out of UJB Jerry Can't seem to decide between Dark Star and Warf Rat and precedes to have his cake and eat it too. A great recording of the boys having fun on the continent.

This Dark star is not quite great. At times it is just drifting aimlessly without any real direction. Phil never unleashes any real muscle. There is a feeling grovey or Mind left body jam I can never keep those striaght which one is which, but this Star lacks intensity. Try 4-14 from earlier in the tour for example. The UJB-Wharf Rat is very good, but the star fails to deliver the big time goods

Excellent performance and sound wise. To bad the ending is missing but what can you expect from a 38 year old tape.

A gem of a show with fiery Pig on organ counterpointing Keith's piano grandly. Could very well be one rhythm guitar and unusual organ player at the start of Good Lovin! Check out the "Teddy Bear's Picnic" tuning before the start of Good Lovin'. Would be my first and only 5 star rating if it were the complete show.
Peace, Bob

Perhaps the last great performance by Pigpen. Only relatively recently has a more comprehensive, but still incomplete soundboard recording of this fantastic performance become available. Sadly, a good chunk of the second set of this excellent concert is still missing.

Although the show gets off to a bit of a slow start, by the middle of the first set things start to heat up. The 17 minute, last Pigpen performance of Good Lovin' is phenomenal. It features a nice smokey jam and some extraordinary lead guitar by Weir. Is that really Garcia playing organ during the intro? Playin' in the Band is typically psychedelic. It's one of the better performances of the song on the tour, the band starting to stretch it out a bit.

The highlight of the show of course, is the incredible second set jam sequence and another amazing performance of Dark Star. A great Uncle John's Band kicks off the suite, possibly the best of the tour. But it's during the jam prior to Wharf Rat where the music really takes off. It's an amazing rendition of the song, highly emotive, and perhaps the best performance of Wharf Rat on the tour.

Once again we are treated to another monumental performance of Dark Star. This exploratory performance covers a great deal of ground during the almost 17 minutes prior to the first verse, much of it is quite jazzy. The snappy opening theme jam in particular is dynamite, and an intense spacey jam punctuated by some wild bass chords preceeds the first verse. After the verse, at about 18:30, a rather amazing bass driven jam developes with some very cool interplay between Billy, Keith and Phil. Eventually Weir leads the band into a beautiful Feelin' Groovy Jam that lasts several delightful minutes before things get rather wild, Phil producing some rather interesting sounds prior to things melting down into a dizzying space segment.

Unfortunately, the conclusion of the performance is missing after Sugar Magnolia. You might think that after two months on the road, the band might show more evidence of fatigue or a lapse in creativity, however this is a tremendous show. Will we ever hear the complete performance? (97 pts*)

*If the new soundboard recording contained the complete show, this performance might garner a perfect score!

five stars
very impressive, 5/26/72 is most known from the london run, also 5/23 worth a spin, but sure glad to see this material leak out. specifically the uncle johns to rat into ds... the space is fantastic. Ill go out on a limb and suggest that the alligator was jerry's finest guitar and 1972 was his finest form of playing, keith adds the final touches to a band on fire. Shame about the comes a time ending.

I agree with the first reveiw. THIS IS THE GOOD OLE GREAT FULL dead. are you kidding meeeeeeeee. they were not good they were the best

another unquestionably Charlie Pulling Rabbits massapeace. Thk you, m'man, 'n' thk you archives.

hell with a review -- just listen.